Active History

Gun Violence in the United States: The Frontier Mentality

January 9, 2013 2 Comments

“Gun Digest 2nd Amendment Contest.” (Charles Kindel, Flickr Commons, click through for original)

By Sean Graham

On December 14, 2012, a man forced his way into an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut and killed 26 people. In a scene re-played far too often, that unspeakable horror led to a fresh round of debate over the reasons for why the United States suffers from gun violence at such a disproportionate rate when compared to the rest of the industrialized world. Following the tragedy, President Obama pointed out that it is a complicated issue that needs to be examined in its entirety. The debate, however, generally consists of people on the left screaming about the need for tighter gun control, while people on the right yell about a popular culture that has desensitized the nation’s youth to violence. At some level both sides are correct: guns are too easy to get in the United States and pop culture (including the news media) does glorify violent behaviour. One aspect that has been overlooked, however, is the influence of the nation’s founding mythology in promoting gun violence. The American experience has been marked by a willingness to stand up and fight for the nation. In this context, violence is not presented as an unfortunate reality of nationhood and national defence, but rather as an expression of American strength and sovereignty. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. Continue reading →

The Effects of Early Community Development on Church Architecture

January 8, 2013 No Comments

By Dan Oliana

St. Luke’s Anglican Church, Sault Ste Marie Public Library Archives

Over the last couple of years, I began to take notice of the churches in my home town of Sault Ste. Marie and admired their architectural design and details. My interest spread and I started looking for other churches and as is human nature, compared them, noticing the marked differences in their range of decorative detail and size. I realized I was looking at the church structures as they stand today but knew nothing of their origins. This architectural interest festered to the point where I ultimately took it on as a research topic.

Given the local nature of the project, I expected the collection of information on the various churches would be a simple task. Merely organizing their construction dates chronologically would probably explain the progression from simple church buildings to more ornate and larger structures. This was not the case for either documentation or explanation. The most surprising outcome of this project was how much of the community’s early development influenced church construction. Consequently, an understanding Sault Ste. Marie’s history was the key to my understanding of local building history.

Ultimately, the answer to the question of variations in church architecture had less to do with when the church was built but more to do with who was involved. I found that churches reflected the congregation at the time of construction. As institutions, churches are different by their very function. Their congregations, although sharing a common faith, represent cross-sections of the community. As members of both the community and the church, congregants were the link; thereby what affected one, influenced the other. Continue reading →

#IdleNoMore in Historical Context

January 7, 2013 No Comments

By Glen Coulthard
The post was originally published on Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society

Much has been said recently in the media about the relationship between the inspiring expression of Indigenous resurgent activity at the core of the #IdleNoMore movement and the heightened decade of Native activism that led Canada to establish the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) in 1991. I offer this short analysis of the historical context that led to RCAP in an effort to get a better sense of the transformative political possibilities in our present moment of struggle.

The federal government was forced to launch RCAP in the wake of two national crises that erupted in the tumultuous “Indian summer” of 1990. The first involved the legislative stonewalling of the Meech Lake Accord by Cree Manitoba MLA Elijah Harper. The Meech Lake Accord was a failed constitutional amendment package negotiated in 1987 by then Prime Minister of Canada, Brian Mulroney, and the ten provincial premiers. The process was the federal government’s attempt to bring Quebec “back in” to the constitutional fold in the wake of the province’s refusal to accept the constitutional repatriation deal of 1981, which formed the basis of the The Constitution Act, 1982. Indigenous opposition to Meech Lake was staunch and vocal, in large part due to the fact that the privileged white men negotiating the agreement once again refused to recognize the political concerns and aspirations of First Nations. In a disruptive act of legislative protest, Elijah Harper initiated a filibuster in the days immediately leading up to the accord’s ratification deadline, which ultimately prevented the province from endorsing the package. The agreement subsequently tanked because it failed to gain the required ratification of all ten provinces within 3-years of reaching a deal.

Continue reading →

Performing Diaspora 2013: The History of Urban Music in Toronto – CFP

January 6, 2013 No Comments

See below for a Call for Papers.

Performing Diaspora 2013: The History of Urban Music in Toronto, is a one day conference event focused on the development of the African Canadian Urban Music culture industry of post-WWII Toronto. In keeping with its mandate, “Spotlighting and Promoting African Canadian Experiences” (S.P.A.C.E.), a collaborative research and social innovation programme of the Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on the Global Migrations of African Peoples, will use this conference as a way by which to collect and provide access to individual and collective memories and contemporary records about members of the African Diaspora in Canada. As such, this one day conference will feature the work of academics, and experiences of musicians, industry and media professionals, in an effort to highlight the development and sustenance of African Canadian music in Toronto, as well as throughout Canada.

The conference will include four sessions, each of which will consider the histories and developments of Urban Music within the greater Toronto area. The two morning sessions (the first, a presentation of academic papers and the second, a roundtable that features notable artists and music production professionals) will focus on the personal and professional experiences of racialized artists across the course of Urban Music’s development in Toronto and across Canada. The two afternoon sessions, (the first, a presentation of academic papers and the second, a roundtable that features notable journalists, record label executives, radio and television personalities) will focus on the development of a genre-specific Urban Music industry within the broader Canadian culture industry. Though the focus of this conference will be music, each panel will use the genre of “urban culture” in order to explore the genre’s relationship to issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, the body, immigration, multiculturalism, discrimination, urban development, notions of citizenship (both within the nation and within the musical community of Canada), and the benefits, challenges and poltics of creating, sustaining and performing music that represents people of African decent in Toronto.

This is a public event hosted at York University in Toronto on May 25, 2013. Check the website for information about the program and registration in the months ahead: performingdiaspora.wordpress.com Continue reading →

Ten Books to Contextualize Idle No More

January 4, 2013 14 Comments

By Andrew Watson and Thomas Peace

After reading comment after uninformed comment, both online and in the media, ActiveHistory.ca decided to compile a short list of books written by historians that address the issues being discussed by the Idle No More movement. Click on a link below to read a brief summary of the book.

Peggy Blair, Lament for a First Nation
Jarvis Browlie, A Fatherly Eye
Shelagh Grant, Arctic Justice
Cole Harris, Making Native Space
Douglas Harris, Fish, Law and Colonialism
J.R. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant
Jocelyn Thorpe, Temagami’s Tangled Wild
Treaty Seven Elders and Tribal Council, The True Spirit and Original Intent of Treaty 7
William C. Wicken, Mi’kmaq Treaties on Trial
Michael Witgen, An Infinity of Nations

In addition to these books, we would also like to direct your attention to the Canada in the Making‘s section on “Aboriginals: Treaties & Relations.” This website provides an overview of the relationship between European empires, the Canadian state and First Nation peoples from the late-fifteenth century to the present. It includes links to online copies of many foundational – and constitutional – documents underpinning Canada’s relationship with First Nation peoples. Continue reading →

Water stories

January 3, 2013 1 Comment

By Merle Massie

Water wells up and flows across the landscape of my memory as a cataclysmic force, ebbing and flowing through my earliest life story. Those encounters shift the flotsam of my perceptions as an environmental historian, shaping the way I think about water. And, these stories require sharing, as they differ radically from that of colleagues raised in urban environments where drinkable water flows under, around, into, and out of every home.

My family’s first farm house, purchased in the early 1970s, did not have a bathroom. Our toilets were the classic outhouse, and a metal five gallon pail with a toilet seat lid tucked strategically behind the furnace in the basement, next to a holder for the toilet paper. It was Dad’s job to haul the honey pail up the stairs every day and dump it in the bush. There was a base efficiency to that daily routine, though, that belies its yuckiness. Humans use bathrooms. Every day. What innovations –– in fertilizer, in composting, in sanitation –– would we create if each household was responsible for managing their own eliminations? Continue reading →

I AM CANADIAN! (Because of treaties with Indigenous Nations)

January 2, 2013 3 Comments

By Tobold Rollo

[This post first appeared on Tobold Rollo’s website.]

As Chief Theresa Spence continues her hunger strike, her request that Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Governor General meet with Chiefs to discuss treaties has many Canadians wondering what relevance treaties could possibly hold today. Anticipating this uncertainty, I wrote a pamphlet with the Mohawk scholar, Taiaiake Alfred, which was widely distributed both in the US and in Canada during recent ‘Idle No More’ events. The pamphlet laid out in clear and concise language the concrete practical and legislative steps necessary to advance the goal of reconciliation. The outline was based on the recommendations laid out in the 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. This Royal Commission, the most comprehensive and expensive in Canada’s history, determined that achieving the goal of reconciliation necessarily entails the restoration of a ‘treaty relationship’.

I recall being a bit confused but mostly just ambivalent the first time I heard Indigenous peoples in Canada invoke the concept of a ‘treaty relationship’. I was twelve years old and it was the height of what would come to be known as the Oka Crisis. To me, treaties were boring relics – artifacts excavated from Canadian history – of interest to history teachers. As I grew older, I was fairly certain that treaties were irrelevant to modern Canada and to modern citizens like myself. What relevance they might hold did not seem to bear on my life in the same way as did taxes or elections. That youthful confusion and ambivalence was displaced over the years by a realization in my adult life that if Canada was to claim legitimacy as a nation as opposed to a complex colonial encampment, that legitimacy must derive from the founding treaties that made Canada possible. Accordingly, I recognized that my identity as a Canadian, as opposed to a mere occupier or colonizer, was dependent on the status of those treaties. The stakes couldn’t be higher.
Continue reading →

On Holiday!

December 21, 2012 No Comments

We’re taking a week-long hiatus from posting new articles during the holidays.

Photograph | Tobogganing on Mount Royal Park slide, Montreal, QC, 1885 | VIEW-1582

Tobogganing on Mount Royal Park slide, Montreal QC, 1885. Wm. Notman & Son. Source: McCord Museum.

The team at ActiveHistory.ca wants to thank all our contributors, guest writers, and readers for making this a very successful 2012.

We wish all of you a most happy holidays and we look forward to continuing our work in 2013!

Historical Roots: Sandy, Skeletons, and Elm City

December 19, 2012 No Comments

Satellite image of Hurricane Sandy, October 25 2012. Source: http://www.nnvl.noaa.gov/GOESEast.php

By Jeffers Lennox

Having spent four years living in Halifax, I’ve experienced my share of Nor’easters. During my MA year, a huge snowstorm forced the university to close on the day scheduled for my first comprehensive exam. The entire class considered this a divine gift. Having now returned to the east coast after two years in Montreal and two years in Vancouver, I expected a “storm of the century” at some point. As any environmental historian will tell you (whether you ask them or not), climate change has increased the frequency and intensity of these kinds of meteorological events. By late October, the northeast was bracing for something awful.

Superstorm Sandy, which for a brief moment was hilariously named the “frankenstorm,” devastated much of New York City, especially the Staten Island area. The human and financial costs are unimaginable and many residents are still dealing with the fallout. Sandy affected other parts of the northeast, but to varying degrees. In our part of southern Connecticut, power outages, flooding, and highway closures were common. Wandering around New Haven the day after the storm meant climbing over fallen trees, cringing at dented cars or smashed porches, and generally feeling fortunate to have come out relatively unscathed.

The storm had historical significance, and not just because it had been dubbed a storm of the century. New Haven residents came face to face with their civic history when a felled tree on the New Haven Green exposed not only its root system, but also a human skeleton. Continue reading →

Making History Look Delicious at the Royal Alberta Museum

December 18, 2012 1 Comment

The author interviewing the owner of the Silver Inn

By Lauren Wheeler

I recently took a trip to a Calgary restaurant where the most iconic of Chinese-Canadian dishes originated. The restaurant is on Centre Street at 27^th Avenue North and you would likely miss it unless you looked for the sign reading “Silver Inn.” Two colleagues from the Royal Alberta Museum (RAM) also made the trip from Edmonton to Calgary to record the interviews. When the interviewee is the owner of the first restaurant to serve “ginger beef,” the footage has to look better than good. It must look delicious.

Making history look good is a big part of designing a museum exhibit. As sites of public history, museums suffer from the stereotype of stale rooms filled with artefacts hidden behind glass and a sleepy security guard ensuring nothing happens to the precious items on display. This idea of museums persists in spite of decades of interesting and innovative exhibits and new methods designed to engage the public with museums. Food is still prohibited in exhibits, but high-quality video of a dish or a detailed description of its ingredients can create the same Pavlovian reaction as the smells of a busy kitchen or a table set for a feast. With this in mind, we went to Calgary in search of footage to add this dimension to the RAM’s Chop Suey on the Prairies exhibit. Continue reading →

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